


The Rebound Shot

by damselindisguise



Category: Dead Space (Video Games)
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe- No Supernatural, Drunk Sex, Drunken Flirting, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Understanding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-11
Updated: 2018-10-11
Packaged: 2019-07-29 04:47:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16256963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/damselindisguise/pseuds/damselindisguise
Summary: Isaac and Nicole didn't work out, so here he is at the local dive bar, getting one of their signature highly alcoholic drinks, when a guy slides onto the stool next to him.





	The Rebound Shot

Isaac is already half-tipsy when he leaves the Earthrise apartments on the New Horizons Lunar Colony, stumbling down the stairs and out onto the pavement, Ellie in tow behind him despite her protests that she doesn't really feel like drinking tonight, no matter if he and Nicole finally decided to call it quits or not after months of fighting each other over every little thing since her instatement to the USS Ishimura- a job that Isaac had told her he was fine with her taking, thank you very much, as much as she'd tell anyone who'd listen to her talk about their problems that he hated being in a long distance relationship with her. Not that he'd said any different, come to think of it, because he'd been open with Ellie that Nicole was the one who really hated being in a long distance relationship, and that he'd urged her to take the job without knowing how badly she was going to react to it when it came time to be far apart from one another for the six months that she'd be spending in space on the Planet Cracker. 

Now, Ellie, being a willing participant in all of the drama, at least mostly, up until now, has found herself embroiled in Isaac's wallowing as a result of their final break-up. She kind of wonders if it had something to do with her, actually, because Nicole couldn't have possibly thought it was perfectly normal that her boyfriend spent all the time that he did with another woman, practically sleeping over at her place in the Earthrise every other night since the other woman had left for space aboard the Ishimura. It's also not a big concern of her's, though, because she knows there was nothing ever going on between her and Isaac. They're just extremely close friends, and if Nicole was too jealous to see that, then it's better that she and the engineer split and end what might have been a somewhat toxic relationship sooner rather than later. She just wishes Isaac was willing to take a little bit of the blame in all that had gone down between the two of them these last few months instead of blaming it all on Nicole- after all, his bisexual crisis hadn't helped matters, especially when he'd decided to keep secret from his girlfriend that he'd realized he found guys attractive just as much as the ladies, if not more sometimes. 

"She isn't worth the pain," she's assuring Isaac, all the while knowing what a problematic situation this all has become, as he drags her down the street. "I mean, you do what you need to do to forget her or get over her or whatever, but getting drunk probably isn't going to help matters all that much."

Isaac, to his credit, does actually stop to look at her, listen, and then check both ways before crossing the street, which is fortunate, seeing as there are still cars on this road, despite most being airborne shuttles nowadays. She tugs on the sleeve of his heavy brown leather coat to slow him down a little bit, and he does listen to her on that, too, so she decides to just succumb to the fact that he's going to be drinking his woes away for the night. She'll fight the battle on keeping him from doing it again another night- for tonight, she'll just let him make a bad decision and try her best to keep him safe from any consequences of that that might arise. She's known him long enough to know that sometimes Isaac Clarke is just a human disaster; after all, she's known him since he and Nicole lived on the Sprawl as her neighbors for a time. He's had plenty of time to screw up since then- and screw up he has, in many ways, his relationship problems with Nicole just being the ones most immediately feasible. He's also caused evacuations with experimental engineering on the desk in his apartments, nearly blown up whole buildings screwing with power sources to try to either increase or decrease output for whatever reason he had each time, and had made the ill-advised decision to befriend the reputably chaotic Nolan Stross recently, drawing Ellie into having corral the two of them whenever they get in their heads to do something particularly outlandish.

Nolan, however, is not coming to the bar tonight, so Ellie is confident she'll be able to keep Isaac under control, or, at the very least, on a short enough leash that the man won't get himself into trouble in any major ways while he drinks off his pain regarding Nicole for the night. 

When they arrive at the Nexus, the nearest dive bar to the Earthrise apartments, Ellie decides to order herself a Brethren Moon burger. It's the most massive plate of food she's ever seen, and she's famished after looking after Isaac all day, not to mention becoming increasingly irritated. Hopefully, getting something in her stomach will help with that. She tugs Isaac to the bar and sets him there before going to grab a menu and order, taking a seat at one of the booths and rubbing her temples as she shoots periodic looks in the engineer's direction to ensure he's not wandering off from his post, where he is getting the bartender's attention already. 

Tonight, she thinks, might be a long night, but she can handle it. She's Ellie Langford, after all. She can handle damn near anything- but maybe, just in case, she'll order herself a glass of Necromorph tequila, ensured to make her sleep like the dead until morning once she's got a full stomach, knowing her history.

~

"Hey, Norton," Isaac says as the bartender-slash-landlord comes over to him when he waves. "Can I get a drink?"

"Depends," Norton says, leaning over the bar and planting his palms on it, "Are you going to pay your rent on time this month?"

"Nicole and I broke up," Isaac sighs, in lieu of an answer, because Nicole's paychecks were a really big help in making sure he could pay for their- now his- apartment, so might actually not be making rent this month after all.

"Fine," Norton rolls his eyes. "But this is the last time I'm serving you drinks until you can pay for your rent on time regularly, got that, Clarke?"

"Got it," Isaac nods enthusiastically, before wilting again when the bartender turns his back.

"What do you want?" he asks, as he sticks his head under the counter to grab some glasses for other patrons and Isaac. He comes back up and glances back at the engineer as he rubs dust off of them with his towel.

"A Rebound Shot," Clarke tells him.

"Going straight to the real hard stuff, huh?" Norton asks, and then shrugs, pouring a little bit of a couple assorted liquors into the shot glass and then topping it off with some astronaut's freeze-dried ice cream. He slides it to Isaac and goes to help his other patrons as the engineer picks it up and throws it back, wincing at the sweet burn of it hitting his throat and then working its way down through his chest towards his stomach, where it settles warmly, chasing away some of the abyss that he feels knowing him and Nicole are finally over.

A guy slides onto the stool next to him and glances at his shot glass before waving his hand at Norton, calling him back over.

"Can I get a whisky, neat?" the newcomer asks, voice low and gruff.

"What kind?" Norton inquires, because the place serves a couple, hardness ranging from 'Spitter' to 'Divider' to 'Puker.'

"The hardest you've got," the guy grunts, as if its offensive he's even been asked such a question. Norton just nods and gets a fresh glass, pouring a healthy helping of Puker whisky into it. 

Before the bartender can walk away, Isaac signals him and asks, "Can I get two more?"

"Two more Rebound Shots?" Norton asks doubtfully, and then shrugs, because as far as anyone can tell, Norton doesn't really give much of a shit about anyone as long as he gets paid. "Sure thing, Clarke. Coming right up."

He fills two shot glasses until the liquor shivers at their brims, and then sprays a bunch of the ice cream on top of them both and passes them off to Isaac, pacing off down the bar to go see Ellie, who is distracted by a massive burger, fries, and a big 'ol glass of what looks like Necromorph tequila.

"That your girlfriend, or something?" the new guy beside Isaac asks him, looking irritated that he's craning over his shoulder to stare at her.

"No," Isaac says, irritated that someone is talking to him besides Ellie. "I just broke up with my girlfriend."

"And you're planning to rebound?" the guy gestures at the shot glasses in front of Isaac, who downs one of the two of them and winces, shaking his head for a moment before shrugging.

"Don't know. Not with Ellie, that's for sure. We've known each other for too long, and I think she and Norton have crushes on each other, anyway."

"Oh, so she's just a friend," the guy grunts, and stares at his whisky. 

"What's it to you?" Isaac inquires, nudging the other guy gently with his elbow- or, at least, he tries to do it gently, but he had already started drinking home and now he's drinking some more, so it comes off a little more roughly than he intends. The guy scowls, turning his head, and now that Isaac is really looking at him, he sees that this scowl draws taut a scar that traces from the man's lips up to just under his eye, rough with tissue. 

"Just wondering, okay, guy?" the man says. "Trying to make conversation, you know?"

"How'd you get that scar?" Isaac asks, liquor loosening his tongue enough that he's not embarrassed to spit something like that out to a total stranger.

"I'm a soldier," the soldier apparent says, short.

"Huh," Isaac says, because, despite that not being a real explanation of how, exactly, the guy got the scar, it's good enough for his increasingly tipsy, maybe-drunk, mind. "I'm an engineer. You might have heard of me, I almost blew up the Sprawl on accident once."

"Oh, so you're a disaster all around," the other guy grins harshly, no mirth in it at all. Isaac wonders for a moment if the guy wants to get into a bar fight or something- he's certainly the wrong patron to choose to try it with, if so, because he's here to wallow, not to fight.

"According to Ellie, that's my middle name," the engineer confirms instead of getting mad. "Isaac disaster Clarke."

"I don't have a middle name," the soldier tells him. "As far as I know, I'm just Sergeant John Carver."

"Sergeant John Carver," Isaac muses. "Isn't that a Founding Father or something?"

"Don't know," Carver shrugs, "I wasn't a history major. I went through the ROTC to join the Earth Defense Force, and that was that. I don't remember much from American History."

"Fair enough," nods the engineer. "I'll drink to that."

He clumsily raises a glass, waves it in front of himself hard enough to accidentally slough most of the freeze-dried ice cream off the top and onto Norton's pristine counter, and then downs it all in a big gulp, grimacing and shaking his head back and forth.

"How much have you had?" Carver asks, not quite laughing at him, but certainly not kindly.

"He's had three shots, and whatever he'd drank before he got here," Norton says, approaching as he rubs his hands on his towel. "You want a refill, Sergeant?"

"You know each other?" Isaac asks.

"We worked together on a ship called the Eudora for a little bit," Carver explains. 

"I didn't know you used to be in the Earth Defense Force," the engineer tells the bartender, surprised.

"Yep," Norton confirms. "Now I just run apartments and serve drinks to a bunch of civvies. Here you go, Sergeant. Drink up."

A patron down the way waves for the bartender, who heads that way again. Isaac checks on Ellie, who is halfway through her drink and a fourth of the way through her burger. Carver, as told, drinks up.

After, he looks a good bit more drunk than before, laying his head against the bar and taking a few deep breaths before chuckling and sitting up.

"Here I am," he says, and hiccups, "Drinking whisky that I don't even like, talking to a guy I don't even know about relationship problems."

"We were actually talking about American History," Isaac tells him sagely, and rubs his eyes blearily. "Why are you here, anyway, John? Just getting a drink? Or do you have something to talk about, too?"

"I don't really talk about my shit with people I don't know," Carver declines to say anything. "No offense, Clarke."

"Isaac," the engineer insists, "Only Norton calls me Clarke."

"Probably 'cause he's military," Carver informs him. "And I'm military too, so it's just natural for me to call you Clarke. But, if you insist, Isaac it is."

"Thank you," Isaac grunts and hiccups. He looks at John, who is looking increasingly attractive the longer he looks at him, what with his strong jaw, high and tight haircut, and perplexing brown eyes that are catching the lights of the dive bar just right. 

"You're welcome," the soldier says, but the engineer has already forgotten what he said to begin with in order to garner that response.

"I'm bisexual," he says, slowly enunciating his words to get it right. "I just figured that out a few weeks ago."

"Good for you," John raises his empty glass, but his eyes cling to Isaac, following the line of his throat down to his leather jacket and tracing his shoulders through it before he grunts to himself and meets the engineer's eyes again.

"Yeah," Isaac says, suddenly not feeling like drinking anymore. "I think I'm gonna head back to my apartment, yeah?"

"What about your friend?" Carver jerks his thumb over his shoulder at Ellie, raising his eyebrows in questioning.

"Oh, Ellie?" Isaac asks, chuckling. "Trust me, Ellie's going to be just fine. She's got a burger and a drink to finish, and then she'll head home. I know her."

"If you say so," the soldier says, and slides off of his seat, grabbing his heavy coat from the back of his chair. It looks like an old Letterman jacket, with red sleeves and a black torso, but it's got a big patch on the back of bare fabric with stitches hanging out where it looks like he tore whatever used to be there off.

"What happened to your jacket?" Isaac asks, curious.

"Nothing," Carver says. "I'm gonna walk you home, since you're drunk off your ass."

"You're drunk, too," the former points out.

"Not as drunk as you," the latter argues, but he's wobbling as they walk out the door of the bar.

~

Ellie looks up from her burger after a few minutes of debating when to tap out and either ask for a to-go container or just throw the rest out, and finds that Isaac has disappeared from his place at the bar. Worse yet, he's taken the guy who was sitting next to him with him, which she is sure can only mean that he's off to pull some shenanigans in the city that might get him arrested, which is exactly what she was glad to avoid with Nolan not coming along tonight. She curses her bad luck at the prospect of yet another newcomer getting her best friend into trouble, curses Nicole for her part of the whole situation at hand, curses Norton for giving Isaac too many strong drinks in a row like he did, and leaves her food sitting there as she steps outside, clearing her head with a few deep breaths of cold, processed air before setting out in the direction she assumes they went.

~

In his apartment, Isaac strips off his coat and tosses it over his engineering table, covering the blueprints he's been working on of late for a new model of the plasma cutter. Carver takes a seat uncertainly beside it and watches as he gets two copper mugs out of his cabinet and fills both up nearly to the brim with tap water before pacing back to the other man and presenting him with the left one. 

"Thanks," Carver grunts, slurred, feeling even more drunk now than he did before. He takes a deep drink of the water, and feels its cool seep into him, taking a little bit of the blurred edge of the alcohol in his system and putting it into focus, instead.

"No problem," Isaac says, and sits down next to him, their shoulders brushing as he does so. He likes that, and wishes that Carver would take off his coat.

As if the soldier has heard his thoughts, he suddenly stands and removes the Letterman-like jacket, tossing it over Isaac's in a little pile. When he sits again, his skin feels piping hot against the engineer's through their shirts, and Isaac has to suppress a shiver of attraction at the weight of the other man when he sort of leans against him. 

"You're really warm," Isaac tells him, unintentionally, so he quickly covers by adding, "Do you want me to turn the air down or something?"

"No," Carver says, "I'm okay, I just run hot, and I've been drinking."

"Me, too," Isaac nods, even though Carver already knew that, seeing as how they met at the bar.

"So, what do you do?" Carver asks, shifting a little bit, and Isaac feels his thick arm brush against his back and kind of dies a little bit inside because of how much he enjoys it. He's definitely kind of a little bit in lust with this guy, now, for sure.

"I'm an engineer," he tells the soldier, instead of telling him that he desperately wants to make out with him, and maybe more. Those Rebound Shots are really living up to their name.

"I think you already said that, actually," Carver grunts in thought, rubbing at his eyes. "I'm tired, Isaac, I think I'm gonna head back to my place."

"You could stay," Isaac says, before he can stop himself, and the soldier looks thoroughly confused for a moment before his eyebrows shoot up with realization that Clarke is flirting with him. 

"Do you want me to stay?" he asks, and his voice is husky, like no one has asked him to 'stay' in a long time, which seems outlandish to Isaac when he looks into John Carver's eyes and sees the heat in those molten caramel brown orbs as the city shines dimly with sun behind him. 

"Yes," Isaac finds himself saying, before he can think better of it in his drunken state.

~

After they make out for a few minutes, Isaac tries his best to undress Carver right there at the table, sliding his hands up the other man's shirt and feeling the slabs of muscle making up his chest whilst he pushes at the red fabric, trying to get it to go over the soldier's head.

"If we were going to do it like this, we might as well have stayed at the bar," he's told, and a moment later Carver picks him up- not an easy task, because Isaac is a lot of legs, which he immediately wraps around John's hips- and carries him to the bed, where he drops down over the engineer. 

Clarke thinks he has something to say, but then can't find the words, and also can't get his tongue to work right, because Carver stands back and strips his shirt off, raising his arms over his head. His muscles bunch, chiseled and defined in his arms, with more mass in his torso. Isaac thinks that he very much wishes he could be the other man's clothes instead of being a person, which is entirely illogical, he knows, but seems perfectly normal in the moment.

"What, you get to look, but I don't?" Carver asks, gruffly playful. "Take your shirt off, man."

Isaac sits up slightly and peels his long sleeved tan shirt over his head, tossing it off to the side so that it hangs off of the bed near the door. The soldier lowers himself over him, grinding against him for a moment before pressing flush to the engineer and kissing him deeply once more, their tongues dancing together in the latter's mouth.

After a few minutes of that, which he enjoys thoroughly, tracing the muscles in Carver's back with his fingers as Carver holds onto him tightly, shifting them higher on the bed every now and again, the soldier sits back and starts undoing his belt, flicking it open and removing it from the loops in his cargo pants before tossing it aside, letting it clatter to the floor just inside of the door to Isaac's apartment. 

"I haven't done this in forever," Carver confesses, half-breathless.

"Me, either," Isaac says, because God knows his long distance relationship wasn't helping on the sex front. 

"I guessed that," John says dryly, indicating Isaac's straining against his pants as he lays there under Carver. "Take 'em off. That's an order."

"Yes, sir," Clarke says, enchanted that the soldier is ordering him around now. He adjusts and unbuckles his pants, shoving them down his legs, tugging one up to remove it, and kicking them off awkwardly to the side with the other. John, already down to his boots and boxers, is watching with a vaguely amused interest as Isaac struggles.

"Shut up," the latter says, flushing faintly.

"Did I say anything?" Carver asks, and lowers himself back over Clarke, knocking his boots against Isaac's bare feet. 

"You didn't take your boots off," he tells the soldier seriously. "Are you really going to wear shoes in my bed?"

"Yes," Carver says. "I'm rude like that." He twists Isaac around and snaps his waistband against his rear.

"Okay," the engineer says immediately, because abruptly that doesn't bother him whatsoever. In fact, if anything, it just makes this whole situation, which is already kind of wildly amazing, even more wild.

"I didn't ask if you wanted to top," Isaac notes, the word still feeling kind of foreign in his mouth. It hasn't been a very long time since he realized he was bisexual, after all.

"I think that's kind of obvious, right now," Carver chuckles, as he runs his hand along Isaac's side to find his length and rub it through his boxer shorts. Isaac supposes he's probably right about that, and resolves not to ask any more stupid questions. He's supposed to be a genius, dammit, he's going to act like it, and not like when he almost blew up the Sprawl because of a stupid accident. He's not going to be a human disaster in bed with Carver, because then Carver might not want to ever do this again, and the engineer is enjoying this too much for it to be the only time that they do it.

He's also got a reputation to uphold, because if there was one thing he'd always been good at with Nicole, it was working out the details of how to have good sex. She'd been his first, and only, until now, but, still. He'd worked hard at that, and he's not going to let it go to waste now that he's with someone else besides her for the first time.

"You good?" Carver asks him, and Isaac does his best to get out of his head about everything. 

"I'm good," he confirms. "Are we doing this?"

"Hell, yeah, we're doing this," the soldier grunts, and gives a tough grin as he draws Isaac's boxers down. The engineer cranes over his shoulder and gives a tiny jump as Carver slaps one globe of his ass, and then the other. He flushes fully, now, and John looks like he likes that, the deep pink shade all over Isaac.

Then, Carver, sitting back to admire Clarke for a moment, rubs himself through his shorts- also red, like that color is some kind of theme with this guy, though Isaac supposes with his monochrome wardrobe of shades of brown and tan he's not got room to talk- and proceeds to tug his waistband out of the way, standing, and remove his undergarments entirely. 

Isaac, though without much to compare the other man to in the way of anything that isn't his own experience with himself, is thoroughly impressed by what he sees. 

"Wow," he vocalizes this, without much intending to.

"Thank you," Carver says dryly, evidently nonplussed by a compliment to his dick.

Isaac arches his back in surprise when Carver steps in close and touches his entrance before pausing. 

"You got lube?" the soldier asks.

"I got what?" Isaac asks, craning over his shoulder again.

"You know, lube," Carver says, "Slick, something to make it smooth?"

"I have lotion," Isaac hums thoughtfully.

"Yeah, lotion isn't meant for this," Carver shakes his head.

"Then, no," Isaac says, disappointed that he's apparently not going to get to have sex tonight after all.

"That's fine," Carver shrugs, and lays on the bed beside the engineer, though he sticks his lower lip out like he's a little put out, too. He doesn't argue, though, or try to go on anyway, which Isaac both appreciates and takes as the gold standard to prove that this guy is a good one, and not an asshole like some probably are.

"What do you want to do instead?" Clarke asks, hopeful that they can still do something fun.

"Blowjobs?" Carver suggests.

"Good by me," Isaac suggests, and though he might not have experience, he dives right in. 

Let no one ever say that Isaac Clarke doesn't try new things, he thinks, as John Carver groans his name.

~

Ellie is nearly ready to call the Earth Defense Force just to get someone else looking for Isaac, despite them being massively overqualified for the task, when she gets to Isaac's apartment. She punches in the code, promising herself that if he's not here, she's going to call someone- maybe even Nicole- and get some help in finding her best friend before he accidentally blows up the Lunar Colony or something equally horrible.

The door opens, and she steps in and freezes, staring in surprise; Isaac is, as it turns out, just fine, wrapped up in the arms of the guy from the bar in his own bed, sleeping off the alcohol that he drank. In fact, until she got here, both of them were fast asleep, but now the other guy is awake, blinking at her in vague surprise.

"Sorry," she stage-whispers. "I'll leave you two alone. I was just making sure Isaac got home okay."

The guy gives her a thumbs-up and then watches her leave. She lets the door slide shut behind her, and then keys in the code to lock it again so that no one- namely, Norton, looking for his rent money- goes wandering in and interrupts them. 

Rebound or not, Isaac deserves this- and by the looks of it, that guy did, too. Maybe, she thinks, enchanted, it's not even going to be a rebound- maybe, just maybe, it'll be the start of something new.

**Author's Note:**

> ((A/N: We love an understanding John! Also: a fluffy sequel to this story? Maybe so! Let me know!))


End file.
